Looking for the Flamingo

We're going for FLAT today! Taking a break from hills and rocks. It doesn't get much flatter than Francis Bay. The walking is easy going with a lot to see, plus a swim in one of the best waters on STJ. 

I parked at the Boiling House ruins, a small boarded up 1800's sugar factory sitting by the road. I walked up the path a short distance to the Creque family summer house. STJ used to be the "country". It was a backwater when St Thomas and St Croix were more populated and prosperous. Nothing like coming here to get away from the madness of St Trauma even then. The house was built on an early plantation foundation and has gone through many transformations over the generations.  Every year the dilapidated building gets worse. It was pouring rain when I got there, I stood under the doorway to the cookhouse, the water was running in everywhere. Sad really. I don't care for the style with it's self important, imposing balustrade, but it doesn't deserve to die the slow death it's dying.

Photo Courtesy of the Trail Bandit

This is the house today and below is the house as it was in the 1950's. One day it will be nothing but rubble.

 This is the cookhouse. As was customary it was built separated from the living quarters, both because it was hot and you didn't want your house to catch fire. The front gallery floor was tiled.

 I went up the hill behind the house following animal paths.  I had to duck under vines and as always watch for spiders and wasps but it was pretty easy going with no mishaps or blood spilled. Doing good.  There are some scattered ruins of a cotton plantation along the hillside. The yellow bricks are the ballast brought over on the ships from Denmark. They didn't need them on the trip back because supposedly the ships were weighted with spices, sugar and other goodies. Everything was used and reused here.

Danish Ballast Bricks

Cotton Plantation Ruins

Hester Francis 1826-1864

This is one of the graves tucked behind the ruins. I always say it's important to take a moment to stop and pay a visit to silent friends. Hello Hester!

The road around the pond is wide and easy. It's been cleared to make it accessible to tourist families. There's a volunteer cleared vista with benches and a great view of the pond and ocean with a cooling breeze (worked on in part by El Bananakeet). 

The sun is quickly drying my clothing and it feels pleasant in the shade. This is not work!

The boardwalk ends on the beach, way at the east end where most beach goers consider it too far to lug their stuff. Mistake. This has to be the best panoramic view on the island, soft white sand, quiet. Standing here you can see along the north shore coast line west to Maho, Cinnamon, Peter Bay, with St. Thomas in the distance.
Enough beach. To the pond!

See Any Peeps?

 A volunteer built boardwalk has been added along the beach and continues between the mangroves and the pond. It's very popular, I'd never seen it before today and though I'm a stickler for leaving things as unspoiled as possible, this is really a sympathetic and environmentally friendly addition.  I take back everything I said about it and the nitwits who came up with the idea. 

Here in the mangroves it's easy to imagine going native. "Lord of the Flies" and "Blue Lagoon" type native, not LL Bean camping gear. 

 This is where the Flamingo has been sited. Seeing him would be a Wow Moment because there is nothing of any exotic or colorful nature on STJ. There's a friendly guy waiting patiently with his spotting scope, we have a convo about our G10 cameras. A number of people are stopping on the lookout decks, but no sign of the Big F, the Pinkster, The Flamigonator. Lots of speculation about where he came from, where he went, why he's here but not a pinky feather in sight.  I am trés disappointo. Oh well. The pond has some wonderful birds. The peaceful place it could be is disturbed by all the people who feel their yakking about what's for dinner and what who said to whom is the priority (why are you even here???)  but the birds don't seem to care and if you're lucky enough to get some silence, you can hear the different calls and imagine yourself in a rain forest.

Stilts

Common Moorhen

Black Necked Stilt

Greater Yellowlegs

 How cool is this! Fiddler crabs!  They're smaller than I always thought they would be, about the size of a quarter. They sit in their holes with just their big claw sticking out. If you get too close they all run. ZZZZIP! 

These are the weirdest bugs. I have no idea what they are. Their color would suggest they're not good to play with but they seem benign. They're always eating these round fruity seeds and busy with each other in sticky clumps. Are they Harlequin Beetles? The name rings a bell but don't quote me.

This was a nice walk, no surprizes, no injuries, really a calming island experience. Heading back along to the road to my car, I notice another ruin in the woods, a modern ruin. I have to check it out. Kind of sad. It's a present day typical island cottage, very cute once. Two rooms, the top of the center wall is left open to let the breezes through, and an open front porch. What more do you need? OK, maybe a bathroom, which I don't see.

I can't help wondering what happened to it and why it was abandoned, who owns it now and what's its story.

And speaking of stories - in 1947 there was a colorful woman named Ethel McCully from NYC who it's said was on a boat going past Maho Beach when she suddenly exclaimed that this was just the place she wanted to build a house. At that she jumped off the boat and swam to shore. There she staked her claim and built her Caribbean cottage that she called "Island Fancy". She wrote a book about her adventure and wanted to call it "I Did It With Donkeys". This title didn't go over well with her publisher so she changed it to "Grandma Raised the Roof." I don't know what happened to Miss Ethel's house when she died, but I thought I knew where to find it.

So I started my final exploration and sure enough this is what's left of Ethel's house. The house itself is intact but closed, maybe inhabited by a Park employee? They get the best houses! The small camp hut she lived in while the house was being built, later the generator hut, was open to the elements, covered in vines and had a large yellow container of Chlorine stored in it. It's Park property now.

I always feel these earlier island homes are so much more charming and appropriate than the billion dollar monsters being built here now.

"Modern" Day Oven

Across the road from "Island Fancy" is another house, no one was home but it was being lived in. It looked like it was built on the foundation of an older structure, the oven was still intact. Every house had an oven like this once. Driving around you see them in people's yards as if they were a garden fixture.

The later ovens look and are built to function the same way they were in colonial times.

Colonial Plantation Era Oven

Another item in the news is the Atlantic Manta Ray that's been hanging around Maho-Francis. It's a huge fellow with a maw of a mouth. When he's sited everyone runs into the water with their snorkels. Believe me, I would be one of them! This neighbor is trying to cash in on the phenomenon with some boiled p-nuts to go. It's an island thing!

End of the Flamingo hunt. I didn't find him but I didn't come up empty handed at all!